


For You, I Learn

by cadkitten



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blind Character, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Explicit Language, M/M, Sign Language, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt sets out to do something truly special for Clint. But what he finds out when he goes to deliver it, puts the breaks on everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For You, I Learn

**Author's Note:**

> Beta Readers: sakura_ame  
> Song[s]: Daredevil soundtrack

Matt closed his eyes behind his mirrored glasses, taking in a deep breath and letting the world come to him in the way that it had been for years since his accident. The sweeping spectrum of motions made by the things in his vicinity, the walls and floors and objects building themselves from the sounds he could perceive. Even the shift of the air dragged up sensation and added to the beauty of what he could see without ever really seeing at all. Or maybe... he saw more than anyone else now. His lips curved upward into a small smile at that thought as he concentrated on the person in front of him.

"Okay, I'm ready."

The petite blonde girl, barely out of high school shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "Mr. Murdock, I still don't see... er... understand how you're going to know what I'm signing to you."

"You don't have to understand it," he replied as gently as he could. "You just need to accept what's going to happen. Let's start."

She held up one finger and then two and then three. "How many fingers?"

"One, two, and then the third. You're using the middle three right now with the thumb holding the pinky down."

He could sense her unease more than see it and he did his best to be disarming. "I see with my other senses. Here," he removed his glasses and set them aside, his eyes still closed. "You can watch my face, do something simple, something I would have learned already from the audio guides."

She signed thank you and then the sign for world and the sign for heart.

"Thank you... world... or was it Earth? And heart." He waited patiently while she gaped at him and then quickly signed back to her who he was, how he was feeling - amused - and that he was ready to learn more. Of course some of it was but the concept of what he meant, but it was enough.

She finally stood and without waiting for another moment, introduced herself and then began the lesson. 

Matt had always been a quick learner, picking up things faster than other kids in school and even quicker in law school than most would have guessed he could have. And this was no exception to that foundation.

The next few weeks, he spent every night declining invites from Foggy to go to the bar, explaining to him that he was studying to make his 'sight' better. Everyone around them would laugh it off as a joke, but Foggy knew better. 

And thus it went on, until Matt could sign his intent with ease, though perhaps not with the precision he really wanted. The words were fragile and different than the ones he'd have spoken in his mother-tongue, but it meant no less just because of the differences.

At long last, he put in for a few night's away, telling everyone he'd be back in a while, that he had business to do elsewhere, and then he slipped off, disappearing from Hell's Kitchen to leave it to its own devices for a few evenings. Besides, he couldn't always be micro managing, right?

The flight was boring and the train ride from the airport to the hotel he'd booked did nothing to ease the tension that gripped his gut. No matter how much careful planning he'd done, he hadn't managed to think through how to break this to the person he'd been doing this for.

But, he supposed, it was only a matter of it being exactly what it was. A token of his favor... a simple gesture - or in this case many - that created exactly what he wanted to have known.

He checked in to the hotel, left his bags in the room, and then ordered a taxi to drive him to Clint's hole-up. It was now or it was never. If he waited until in the morning, the intel he had that Clint was there for the day might not be good anymore and he'd miss his chance. 

The taxi took almost no time at all, whipping through the streets and then depositing him nearly on the doorstep of the place he had been aiming to arrive at. He paid and exited, ensuring he had everything and then maneuvered his way into the building via the aid of a kind stranger who held the door for him, despite the automatic locks on it that should have required a code he didn't have. Social engineering at its finest. 

Up the elevator he went and then off onto the proper floor, having listened to the floors slip past as he went, the braille being worn off the buttons. He stepped out and moved down the hallway. With luck, the building would be set up the same way as most complexes. He took careful steps, listening as he passed doorways, some silent, some with people's pets, and some with the human occupants home. Finally, he came to the one that was quieter than the rest, the feeling of the panel on the door different beneath his fingertips, and he raised his hand and knocked, standing back and moving his hands to the sides to show them, his stick dangling from two fingertips.

The door finally slid open and a smile slipped over Matt's face. So the intel had been right, it was Clint. He gestured faintly toward the doorway and cocked his head, Clint breathing out, "Yeah, come in."

Once the door was closed, Clint was at his elbow in a second. "I'm not alone, Matt. Steve's here."

"I know." Matt gave him his most disarming look, his voice pitched to just the right area he knew Clint could still hear him at. "Where do you think I got my information from?"

"How does he even know you?"

"He doesn't, Nat does, she trusts me, he gave me what I needed to know." Matt headed toward the living room and the sound of another person's breathing. He stepped into the room and allowed everything to come into sharp relief in his mind's eye. Turning to Cap, he gave a bob of his head. "Owe you my gratitude and a favor."

"Nonsense... I'll make myself scarce." Steve got up and headed for another room. 

Once he'd gone, Matt turned back to Clint, folding up his stick and easing himself out of his jacket. Both landed on the couch. Before he lost his nerve, he started out, despite his hands shaking. "Clint." Once he had the archer turned toward him, he began to sign out everything he'd wanted to tell him and could never give voice to. How he'd felt the first time they'd met, how much Clint had come to mean in his life and how close of friends they'd become. 

The scent of saline met his nose and he knew instinctively Clint was in tears despite not a single change of his physical stance or anything else. Perhaps the tears never left his eyes, but they were there, nonetheless. 

He paused for a moment and Clint barely whispered out, "But how... how did you learn?"

"The same way I can see everything else around me. I just had to put my mind to it and really focus for a while."

Clint quickly signed out thank you and Matt returned you're welcome. They regarded one another for a few minutes, Clint in slight disbelief and Matt in vague amusement, before Clint began to sign things back to him.

He told him of how he could never say this aloud, that no one could ever hear it, but that in the time he'd known Matt, his worldview had changed. He told him of his wife and his children and how he never regretted them for an instant except when he placed them accidentally in danger. But how, right then, he would have handed over his heart in a whole other way if only it's hadn't been so wrong, so horrible.

Matt carefully returned the general essence of what he felt; the fact that he was proud that Clint had settled down and he was overjoyed that he had children to call his own. And then he told, as blatantly as he could without seeming offensive, that if he'd not been in the bounds of marriage, he would have had him right against the wall, Steve being in the other room, be damned.

Clint's laughter rang clear as a bell in the room and he lifted his hands to start to tell Matt something which from the way he was standing would probably be far more dirty than that. But Matt could sense Steve now, the other man having come to lean against the wall. Matt cleared his throat and signed a quick, "Behind you."

"Ah... hey, Steve."

"Yeah, hey... you two were being awful quiet for a pair that usually talks while half-yelling." Steve crossed his arms, the air around him a bit uncomfortable. "Did I just interrupt something I don't want to know anything about?"

Clint snorted and Matt shook his head, a small smile gracing his lips. "No. I just wanted to share my new skills with him, that's all."

"Yeah...? The sign language?" Steve asked.

"Yes, the sign language." Matt moved to the couch, settling himself down on it, moving the tail of his coat, which he'd intentionally settled on. He could feel Steve's eyes on him, tracking his every move.

Finally, the larger man quietly offered, "You don't have to pretend for me, Murdock. I am well aware of who you are and what you can do. I wouldn't have given you the information if I hadn't researched you. Nice job the other week, by the way."

Matt gave him an easy smile, settling down and crossing one leg over the other. Steve was observant in many ways and blind as all hell in others. And coming from a blind man, that was not a compliment. "Thanks. It's not easy to remember you don't have to fake it sometimes."

Clint eased onto the couch next to him, perhaps closer than was entirely necessary. He could feel the heat radiating from the other's body and for an instant, he nearly decided to leave. The heat was indicative of arousal, as was the way Clint's biological responses were thrumming through him. But, if he couldn't trust the other to do what was right, then he was entirely wrong about him to start with.

Clint cleared his throat. "Can you... uh... give us a bit without listening in?"

Steve pushed away from the wall and nodded, turning to go down the hallway instead of where he'd come from. 

Once he'd gone, Clint placed one hand on Matt's thigh, squeezing gently before simply letting it rest there. "If I were a weaker man, I'd be asking you to my bedroom right now, Matt Murdock."

"I know." Matt reached out, careful to run his fingers over Clint's jawline and then ease them away from his skin before he became more of a temptation than he already was. "I can hear it... sense it... in everything you do. But I also know you won't do a thing to hurt your wife and kids."

"Never," Clint breathed out. He gazed at Matt with all the affection in the world before he closed his eyes and flopped back against the sofa. "You had no way of knowing... and I'm so sorry for that. God how it must hurt."

"It doesn't." It wasn't really a lie, it ached a little, but it didn't hurt like a flat-out denial would have. He put his hand on top of Clint's own, their fingers entangling for the time being. "I understand having to hide them and I understand this situation a hell of a lot more than you think I do."

"Really? Can you know how hard my heart is pounding? How much I want to just throw caution to the wind and do everything I know I shouldn't? Do you really know all of that?"

"In a fundamental sort of way... yes." Matt slid his hand free of Clint's own and then slid up his arm and back down. "Your hair is on end, your heart rate is high, your body temperature has risen quickly in the past few minutes, your breath is quickened... you want sexual relief... that's what it all adds up to. I can't know what you want in your mind, but I know what your body desires."

"That's... fascinating and humiliating." Clint managed a laugh afterward, shaking his head on the couch.

"Couldn't agree more." Matt wet his lips. "If it helps, you can actually see how those responses affect me."

He could hear Clint's breath hitch after a slight movement and then how the fingers on his leg grasped the material harder to mask the slight trembling. He covered Clint's hand with his own. "Don't... it's not worth the way it'll make you feel afterward. The lies, the pain... don't do things you'll regret."

"I could talk to her," Clint all but whispered, "see if she'd agree... just for one time." He sounded ashamed of even that.

"No. You'll hate what this is, what we could have and what we did if you do that. And she'll fear why you did it for the rest of your lives." Matt pushed himself up off the couch, picking up his jacket and sliding it on. "But I tell you what... if you ever find yourself on the other end of an open relationship... one that's real, not one for the sake of this only... then let me know. But I don't want regrets, Barton. And I don't want some lousy one night mistake, either." Matt reached to touch his cheek again. "I care far too much about you for that."

Clint touched his hand to Matt's own, holding it there. He nodded against his palm and then whispered, "I couldn't have done it anyway..."

"I know. You're not one of those people, you never have been." Matt let Clint press a kiss to the palm of his hand and then took his stick from Clint's offered hand. "I'll see myself out. But, Clint... don't let this make you not talk to me, like you usually do."

"Never," came the slightly muffled reply.

Matt headed to the door, pausing when he noted the door Steve had disappeared into was open. He smiled a little and barely breathed out, "He's a good man, Steve. You guys would be remiss to not see that."

He heard the rustle of clothing and then the quiet, "We know. That's why we keep him around."

With that, Matt opened the door and stepped outside, firmly shutting it and hearing it being locked from the other side before he opened his stick and began lightly tapping his way down the hallway.

**The End**


End file.
